Retail chains, measured.
Large US retail chains — the incumbent counterpart to the DTC sample. Read the sampling limit first: most of this sector will not answer an automated request at all.
Read this before the numbers
sampling limit51% of the sampled chains refused a plain HTTPS request — the highest refusal rate of any vertical measured here, and higher even than the DTC sample. What survives is 17 homepages: the chains willing to answer a non-browser client. That is a real and interesting population, but it is not the retail sector, and no figure on this page should be read as one. The refusal rate itself is the most reliable number here.
The observatory
17 homepages · Rev A · Jul 2026- 01Office Depot25/1003rd-party42trackers4pre-cookies20
- 02Staples43/1003rd-party5trackers8pre-cookies19
- 03eBay45/1003rd-party19trackers0pre-cookies19
- 04Costco49/1003rd-party21trackers2pre-cookies8
- 05Nike49/1003rd-party18trackers2pre-cookies5
- 06Sephora62/1003rd-party3trackers1pre-cookies18
- 07Barnes & Noble62/1003rd-party14trackers2pre-cookies1
- 08Walmart64/1003rd-party5trackers4pre-cookies2
- 09Dollar General69/1003rd-party23trackers0pre-cookies0
- 10Lowe's72/1003rd-party3trackers1pre-cookies24
- 11Ulta Beauty72/1003rd-party11trackers1pre-cookies5
- 12Michaels75/1003rd-party13trackers1pre-cookies2
- 13IKEA76/1003rd-party11trackers1pre-cookies3
- 14Foot Locker81/1003rd-party7trackers0pre-cookies0
- 15Old Navy81/1003rd-party4trackers1pre-cookies5
- 16Gap84/1003rd-party2trackers1pre-cookies5
- 17Nordstrom88/1003rd-party0trackers0pre-cookies1
17 of 35 large US retail chains homepages · measured 2026-07-29 · score = transparent composite of the raw signals in each row
Analyses
sector sheetOne HTTPS request per homepage. No JavaScript executed, no interaction simulated — only what any client can observe.
Read the methodology